Ready Player One (2018)

This is the most pandering movie I've ever seen. Nostalgia doesn't make up for an awful and predictable plot, Terrible acting, and Ham-fisted references.

Fmovies: If you are just looking for a fun movie with expertly directed action sequences, wow moments, and beautiful effects, this is the movie for you. If you are the type of person who cannot help but analyze every movie you see, Ready Player One will cause you some problems.

Spielberg is a master of wow moments. He knows how to capture characters in moments of awe, and he knows how to make the audiences respond with dropped jaws and bewildered expressions. That's why the guy is one of the most financially successful filmmakers of all time. Watching this particular film of his makes it easy to see, even if you weren't already aware of his reputation, that Spielberg works the camera like few others can.

That said, this movie is not perfect.

The premise, at least on its surface, seems wonderful. A teenage boy (Tye Sheridan), named Wade Watts (because it sounds like a superhero's alter ego) in the near future plays an ultra-version of a virtual reality game to escape his grim real-world existence. Everyone in his world does. And we can see why. The VR world (The Oasis) is awesome.

Wade spends his time obsessing over a contest in The Oasis left behind by its now deceased creator. The winner of the contest claims a kajillion dollars (or something like that) and control over The Oasis. With a prize like that, Wade is obviously not the only person trying to win.

So, one day he meets a girl who uses the player name Art3mis (a charming Olivia Cooke) and joins her group. Together they try to win the contest before the evil company does and puts ads in The Oasis (which doesn't seem that bad). Then blah, blah, blah. You can imagine how this all turns out. If not, great, you'll be surprised.

This all seems fine and fun until you dissect the movie even a little bit. The message the movie sends is that this is all about friendship, which is total BS. Friendship is important, sure, but in this world, there is more at stake. Wade and much of the country live in terrible poverty, and a couple mega-businesses control the state of everything. It's a miserable reality with problems that we see today, except amplified by 100.

It's irresponsible and insulting that the movie pretends that this future world will be okay as long as The Oasis doesn't have ads. People still live in poverty. The world is still in shambles.

What I'm saying is, the movie has a problem with stakes. The stakes of this future world are enormous and dire, but the movie chooses to ignore them. That doesn't sit right with me.

One other issue, and this one is minor, is that this movie seems like it's made for kids, but it makes a bunch of 80s nostalgia references. Does that make sense? I don't think today's 14-year-olds care about Duran-Duran.

Even looking past the social blinders this movie chooses to wear and the confusing nostalgia choices, the third act drags horribly. I spaced out for a good ten minutes and didn't miss a thing.

In spite of all that, this movie has moments of ecstasy. If you are going to see, and I'm not sure if you should, see it in a theater. If you can avoid analyzing the movie and simply enjoy it from a pure entertainment standpoint, you may love it.

I wanted to give this movie 4.5 stars but sadly that isn't possible so I am rounding down.

When I first heard news of the synopsis of the movie being leaked and that it was vastly different from the book I hoped they fixed some of the issues the book had. Because even though the book is fun, for it being a book focused on people that actually lived through the 80's it lacks serious depth. I graces the hard issues but never really tackles them (what does being alive mean? Online vs Offline live? What is romance?).

Going into this movie I had hoped they would touch on some of these issues but right from the start things go wrong. It is easy to harp on this movie for not following the book, but at best 2% of the book can be found in this movie. Wades origin story is off. All the challenges have been altered. All he hard hitting moments of sacrifice and taking risks removed. What you are left with is a watered down "spectacle movie" that doesn't make much sense.

Aside from that most of the actual 80's references have been cut. Instead we get pop-culture references (Halo, Gears of War, Track mania, Golden EYE). I can sort of understand why, because they wanted to make it PG13 and the PG13 wouldn't get text based games and 80's references, but it takes away from the entire identity of the book.

The acting is alright although I can't help but feel they completely wasted Simon Pegg's talent. It actually took me a while to even notice he is in the movie all together. All he is is a bland English voice over. A real shame as he normally adds a lot of character to his characters.

Visually the movie is fine. The world outside the Oasis mostly follows the books. The world inside the Oasis is crisp and well rendered. Animations are fluid and facial animations are spot on. This is one of those movies where the 3D is completely tagged on and didn't add anything to the experience however.

Overall I can't praise this movie. It's few clever changes are not enough to save it from mediocrity and the few nostalgia moments will hardly excite the real "nerd". Had they follow the book this movie would have been, like the book, a solid 7/10. As it is now I can't give it above a 4.5/10 in good conscience.

Ready Player One fmovies. 'Ready Player One (2018)' should have been called 'The Pop-Culture Movie', since it is so chock-full of blatant references and call-backs to media, from the eighties and nineties in particular. It seems as though this over-reliance on pre-existing material, along with its recognition and nostalgic value, is the driving force behind most of the narrative, being that the flick itself doesn't capture the spirit of the films it intends to ape, and so often calls out by name to cringe-worthy results, but instead shoves in reference after soulless reference in a vapid attempt to prey on its audience's ability to recognise things they've seen before. This 'nostalgia vampirism' is meant to evoke memories of better films and have those emotions transposed onto this one, though it only succeeds in the former and reminds you how much you'd rather watch any of those than this. It's evocative of the larger issues that plague the flick, those being that it doesn't have any real stakes or ability to engage on its own and also treats its audience as rather dumb and forces expository dialogue down their throats at every opportunity. The on-the-nose exposition was honesty some of the most intense and grating I'd experienced in some time. The feature did have some nice visual effects and I cared about the digital 'avatars' as much as any of their real-world counter-parts, though only to a certain degree, but so much was happening that it was hard to register at times due to the odd colour palette and heavily contrasting character designs. It didn't have a cohesive aesthetic, to say the least. It did have a good score by Alan Silvestri and some of its allegorical undertones certainly ring true. I honestly wasn't entertained, though, despite all the visual splendour and things that should appeal directly to me, and that really tells you all you need to know. For all the throw-away movie references, where was the fun of 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)'? Where was the wonder of 'E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)', the suspense of 'Jaws (1975)' or the excitement of 'Jurassic Park (1993)'? In other words, where was Spielberg? 4/10

I went to see this movie with my boyfriend. I had read the book and he hadn't.

Let me start with saying to all those people who say that people who've read the books are whining that my boyfriend didn't like the movie whatsoever. Yes there are a couple of cool scenes. Yes there are some funny jokes. Yes the CGI looks amazing.

But oh my lord what happened?

What happened to all the smart dialogue and puzzle solving? What happened to the cool and funny references? And oh my god what happened to the plot?

I'm aware that it can be difficult to transfer a book to a movie but come on. Nothing besides the characters names were similar to the book. The plot is very Hollywood and stiff.

It's nothing you haven't seen before. Hollywood unfortunately got the best of this one.

I personally did not read the book prior to watching this movie. I did not go into the theater with preconceived ideas or expectations. With that being said, I was not disappointed at all. Most of the negative reviews this movie is getting is from raging nerds who say it's not as good as the book (are they ever)?) This is a great and entertaining movie, I absolutely recommend ignoring the raging nerds and go watch it.